updated 07:34 am EDT, Tue October 1, 2013

Offering free upgrades to gigabit speeds for 300Mbps subscribers

AT&T is following through with its plans to spoil Google Fiber in Austin, as it starts to deploy its own fiber network in the city and surrounding area. The 100-percent fiber Internet from the carrier will be preceded by a deployment of its U-verse with GigaPower service, complete with "more advanced TV services and features," starting this December.

While it won't be providing 1 gigabit connections at first, it will be offering anyone that signs up for its U-verse service with a speed of 300Mbps a free upgrade to a 1 gigabit connection, when it goes live in mid-2014. The company's Total Home DVR will be supplied as part of the service, allowing for multi-channel recording and viewing, and 50GB of free cloud storage. Pricing and availability for U-verse with GigaPower will be revealed closer to December, but AT&T is already allowing users to register their interest for the service through a neighborhood voting system, similar to Google Fiber's "Fiberhoods" scheme.

AT&T initially announced it would offer a gigabit fiber service in Austin shortly after Google named it as one of its Google Fiber buildout locations, second after Kansas City. Just as for AT&T, Google hopes to start connecting homes to the service by mid-2014.